The Alumni

Saud Alzahrani, MD MS

Naweed Alzaman, MD

Dr. Alzaman received his MD from the King Abdulaziz University Medical School at Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and completed his internal Medicine residency at Baystate Medical Center (affiliated with Tufts U School of Medicine) and Endocrinology fellowship at Tufts Medical Center, where he stayed for an additional year to conduct clinical research. Following completion of his training in the United States, Dr. Alzaman returned to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he practices endocrinology and conducts research in rare forms of diabetes, type 1 diabetes, and vitamin D binding protein genotypes in the Saudi population. He also serves as time Assistant Professor of Medicine at Taibah University School of Medicine, which is in the western region of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Naweed and AG collaborated in secondary analyses from two completed trials, which showed for the first time that the relationship between free and total 25(OH)D concentration do not vary systematically by race, which suggests that the clinical assessment of vitamin D status in blacks and whites should follow a single standard.

Erin Casey

Erin earned her B.S. in Biology and minor in Anthropology from Union College, in Schenectady NY in 2013. She has worked on various clinical research projects at Tufts Medical Center at the CTRC through the Tufts CTSI. Prior to becoming involved in clinical research, Erin worked at the Tufts Medical Center Emergency Room for 2 years. After spending the next 2 years with our team, Erin is looking forward to attending PA school in the fall of 2017 to continue her career trajectory.

Yan Chu

Ms. Tam received her BS in Psychobiology from UCLA and her MS in Biomedical Sciences from Tufts U. School of Medicine. On June 2014, Idy joined the team as a research assistant and rapidly advanced to become the lead research coordinator of the Tufts site of the D2d study. Idy optimized study processes, maximized efficiencies and built meaningful relationships with D2d participants, which led to the Tufts site exceeding its original goals of participant recruitment and maintaining outstanding retention of participants. Her efforts in D2d were recognized at the national level when the D2d executive committee made her the recipient of the D2d True Blue award, which is given to a D2d study staff who demonstrates productivity, creativity, dedication and enthusiasm and serves as an ambassador of study at the local and national level. In 2016, Idy enrolled at Tufts U. School of Medicine to continue her career trajectory.

Joanna Mitri, MD MS

Early in her career Dr. Mitri focused on prevention of cardiometabolic disease and worked with AGP on the CaDDM study, a trial evaluating the effect of vitamin D and calcium supplementation on pancreatic function in adults at risk for diabetes. During her Endocrinology fellowship at Tufts Medical Center, Dr. Mitri was awarded a grant to study the association between vitamin D and metabolic syndrome in the Diabetes Prevention Program. The abstract from this project won the Endocrine Society Outstanding Abstract Award. The positive results from these two studies led to the design and conduct of the D2d study. Concurrently with her clinical fellowship, Dr. Mitri completed a MS degree in Clinical and Translational Science at Tufts University that further enhanced her research skills. Following her fellowship, Dr. Mitri worked for 3 years in an underserved area where she had the opportunity to care for patients with diabetes in a city with the highest rate of obesity in the state. Dr. Mitri joined Joslin Diabetes Center (Boston, MA) in 2015 where she remains clinically active with a special focus in lipid disorders, and serves as an investigator in research projects, including one that studies the metabolic pathways of increased cardiovascular risk in type 2 diabetes and another on the effects of dairy products consumption on body weight and cardiovascular risk factors in patients with type 2 diabetes. In accord with her developing interest in health care delivery, Dr. Mitri has joined the Innovation Department at Joslin to work on fostering health system alliances in care and education delivery.

Idy Tam, MS

Ms. Tam received her BS in Psychobiology from UCLA and her MS in Biomedical Sciences from Tufts U. School of Medicine. On June 2014, Idy joined the team as a research assistant and rapidly advanced to become the lead research coordinator of the Tufts site of the D2d study. Idy optimized study processes, maximized efficiencies and built meaningful relationships with D2d participants, which led to the Tufts site exceeding its original goals of participant recruitment and maintaining outstanding retention of participants. Her efforts in D2d were recognized at the national level when the D2d executive committee made her the recipient of the D2d True Blue award, which is given to a D2d study staff who demonstrates productivity, creativity, dedication and enthusiasm and serves as an ambassador of study at the local and national level. In 2016, Idy enrolled at Tufts U. School of Medicine to continue her career trajectory.